Your Face among the Ashes
by Skittles001
Summary: Peeta deals with the pain through drawing. Better than it sounds. Mockingjay spoilers. A one-shot. T for some  but not a lot of  violence. Please R&R. Winner of a THG Fanfic contest on Goodreads.   Enjoy.


Line upon line.

Sketch upon sketch.

Peeta Mellark tried to forget the beatings.

The pencil trembled in his hand, and he grasped it tighter, like his memories, holding onto it for dear life.

But like his memories, and his sanity, when he held too tight, it crumbled to pieces like the last cookie in the batch.

Peeta felt his shoulders tense up; the noose of memories tightened around his neck. He shook of the feeling, looking out the window of his room onto the streets of the glimmering Capitol. Everything was prim and polished.

Prim.

The memory cut him like a knife, and he doubled over in pain. Images flashed before his eyes, flitting back and forth from reality like lightning bolts in the summer sky.

Prim. The Reaping. The Square. The complete silence.

And _her._

Peeta clawed at his head, catching balls of hair between his hands and pulling, biting the lining of his cheeks until blood oozed out of the sores.

_She _was the stuff of nightmares. The darkness that surrounding him day and night, both in his thoughts and in his dreams.

Every day, he was taken to a small, dark room, and pain crept trough his veins and muscles like snakes slithering through the sunken grass. And then he saw her. _Her. _

How he believed that she could have loved him, he never knew. Seeing himself falling deeper and deeper under her spell, spiralling into a tornado of love...

No, not love. Love was not a throw away word. It was not something you just said off-hand. It was like a whisper in the wind. It could not be seen or heard, but someone, somewhere, know it exists. Peeta knew he had loved Katniss. He also knew that she had never loved him. The one-sidedness of their relationship negated any semblance of love.

They did not have love. They had hypocrisy. Manipulation. Betrayal.

Not love.

No, not at all.

So when he saw her face on screen, and the pain shot through him like arrows and bullets, he knew that nothing could be more painful than love. Loving someone and not having them love you back was the ultimate pain, the worst kind of torture imaginable...

_No,_ Peeta shook his head from left to right, sweeping away the things that could not be erased and sweeping them under the carpet, like he had in the Bakery, when he swept up lint and dust and wanted to meet with Ash and his other friends.

Of course, he had known what beating was before he had ever taken part in the Games.

But still, nothing came close to the cutting betrayal.

But that Peeta, the one who had let himself feel, was gone.

It hurt too much.

He straightened up, took a deep breath and leaned against the window sill. The sun slowly set against the Capitol's horizon, casting orange and purple shadows against the gleaming silver of the buildings.

He decided maybe now he would finally paint a picture of something.

Peeta had not consciously tried to draw anything since he had arrived in the Capitol. It could have been two weeks, two months, two years...he couldn't be sure.

But he remembered forgetting how to draw.

At first, when he arrived, after the initial interview, where he protected her at all costs, all because he loved her, and the consequent beatings from then on. There were bi-weekly beatings. Usually. Sometimes they decided to change it up. Sometimes it was once, more times three times, and occasionally it became a daily ritual to train up-and-coming Peacemakers.

Ironic. The way to peace is savage beatings.

But around the time of his 13th—or was it 20th?—beating, Peeta screamed out as the bones in his hand shattered like a crystal vase.

That had ended his hobby.

For a long time.

But slowly, he had regained motion in his hand, and even practiced with his left to build up strength, so that he could leave this world and just float away into his work.

He had been taught all his life that you have to know the rules before you can break them. So he began by learning how to draw a straight line, which is a lot more difficult than it sounds. After days of practice, Peeta finally managed to draw a line across the page, and almost wept for joy. Then he began by drawing, arcs, and circles, nothing that resembled anything in particular.

The he began to free-draw, letting his mind wander and his hand flow free as a mockingjay across the page. As free as she had always been hidden in the forest.

Peeta felt a twinge in his chest, but not one of disgust and anger. He disregarded it immediately and crossed the room, staring at the sketch pad leaning against its easel.

But it wasn't just sketches and lines.

It was a face.

It was _her_ face.

Her long braid, streaming down her left side like a waterfall. Her wide eyes watching him, knowingly from the hidden depths of the page, and that familiar half-smile seeking him. Her lips seeking his lips.

Peeta didn't remember drawing it.

He stumbled forward, dazed, and grasped the sketchpad in his hands, flipping it open and staring.

She was there.

She was everywhere.

How could he not have realised? How could he not have seen what he was drawing?

Simple, he thought, he didn't want to see it. He didn't want to admit it to himself.

Because, as he flipped through the pages, tracing every line he had carefully, and unwittingly, crafted, he didn't feel revulsion, terror or even loathing.

All he felt was love and sadness.

Despite their tricks and treachery to make him believe that she never loved him, and she may well not have, Peeta's subconscious thought otherwise. It knew that no matter what, in the depth his being, in the recesses of his soul, the Boy with the Bread would always be in love with the Girl on Fire.

Stains appeared on the pages in front of him, bleeding through the pencil and the ink, and washing some of his hard work away. But Peeta didn't care. For once, he wanted to cry. He wanted to feel the pain.

He wanted to feel.

Peeta clutched the book in his hands like it was his last tie to this earth and backed into his bed, sitting on the edge and drinking in every image he could.

He missed his family.

He missed his friends.

He missed everything.

He missed her.

She was everything.

Everything to him.

Minutes—or hours—passed, before Peeta was startled out his reverie by the sound of an opening door.

"Mellark, it's time for you viewing."

Peeta's chest collapsed at this, tears sprang to his eyes like well water.

"No," he choked. "No, you can't—not now—no!"

"Mellark?" the Peacemaker strutted forward, fingering the hilt of his gun. "You'll come when I tell you to come. You'll jump when I tell you to jump and you'll crap when I tell you to crap. Now get _up!"_ his words rebounded off every corner of the room, but Peeta just clutched the book tighter to his chest.

"What's that you got there?"

"A book."

"Ooh, what kind of book?" he teased.

"Nothing that you could handle. After all, it's words, not pictures." The Peacemaker fumed at the insult, which made Peeta laugh, since he just flat out lied. It was all pictures. No words.

Because no words could describe how he felt.

Feels.

The Peacemaker roughly grabbed Peeta by the hair, grabbed the book, and threw him to the ground, tearing it from his fingers.

He flicked through the pages, his laughter getting more and more robust with every turn. Peeta pushed himself up onto all fours, his artificial leg slipping against the tiled floor, and made a grab for the book. The Peacemaker pulled his gun from his waist and pistol-whipped him across the skull. Stars and constellations turned into black holes in front of his eyes, and Peeta swayed back and forth before collapsing to the ground.

"Maybe we've been letting you off too lightly, huh, Mellark? Maybe you need to be _taught a lesson?"_

Peeta said nothing. He couldn't. He still felt dizzy from the hit.

"Mellark? This is a book of your hopes and dreams, right?"

Peeta stood up a little straighter, and watched the Guard pull out a lighter and flick to open; the flames dancing to his words. "Now, watch them go up in smoke."

It wasn't long after the corner ignited that the whole book fell into a crumbling pile of ash, shrivelling up before Peeta's eyes.

Peeta ran, anger bulleting through him. He wanted to hurt the guard, hurt him like he had hurt Peeta. But the guard was prepared, and Peeta felt piercing pain through his side, and warm slick blood flow through his newly torn shirt. The Peacemaker twisted the knife in his stomach, and Peeta felt pain like he had only known twice before. Each time fighting for his life in an arena for the enjoyment of millions.

Now, it was solely for the enjoyment of one, sadistic man.

"Now, Mellark, we're going to take you to the medical wing, tell them how you attacked me and I had to protect myself, and maybe up your dosage during your hi-jacking. How does that sound?"

"Terrible." Peeta grunted, almost vomiting from the pain.

"Good." The guard roughly pulled him out the door, but Peeta glanced back at the smoking pile of ash, and reminded himself that even if he forgot this moment, that deep down inside...

The boy with the read would always be in love with the Girl who was now on fire.


End file.
